Last night before I fell into my coma, K, in an IM conversation, asked me to take a look at the work of Valarie Kaur, a third generation Sikh-American. Ms. Kaur, beginning soon after September 11, 2001, has spent her recent years chronicling the state of these United States, and how the "others" - desi folk (Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus etc) in her investigations - like herself are doing. And the news, under-reported and obfuscated by the main stream media, she has brought back is pretty grim. And the recent grievous stabbing of a Sikh grandfather in California is simply another addition to her story.

Since my arrival here in Atlanta - it will be six years in three days - I have often pondered on the issues of assimilation and differences, more so in view of the recent debates on immigration that are raging here in the USA. Some of the arguments presented are quasi-racist, as expounded in professor-pundits' policy papers* in Foreign Policy or as public ravings of American neo-Nazi/ Ku Klux Klan groups. The narrative they spin is essentially this: the culture and the strength of their United States is based on the (hypothetical) Puritan (i.e., white) Protestant ethos or standards, and since the "others" (based on their degree of stupidity, these commentators qualify who the "others" might be) will never be able to (or will chose not) adopt these standards, they will consequently degrade United States. Hear any echoes of a recent toothbrush-mustached forerunner?

In this context the work that is being done by people like Valarie Kaur is important because it is for the "others" like her (even though her grandfather migrated to the US nearly a century ago, she will be the “other” as long as “United States” is an insufficient answer to that most innocuous of questions “Where are you from?” just because she doesn’t look like her interrogator) to claim a space for themselves, especially in the face of arguments put forth by such "regular" Americans, whatever this strange species may be. I have heard, and read** numerous arguments against hyphenated identities, and the dangers of multiculturalism etc to those mythic “standards” (I am all for standards; not authoritarian ones imposed on me from the high or derived from some holy book but those that are self reflective and communal.

And I think, at the core people sincerely making such arguments haven’t reflected on themselves long enough to realize that their arguments are based quite a theory: their theory of the American, not that multitudinous Whitmanic variety but their version of most absurdly restrictive "regular Sam" kind. I say this based on my own experiences of encounters with a sufficient number of “regular” Americans. From these experiences, I know how ethnic/ regional/ group markers never truely disappear (what was the American poet Robert Lowell’s joke about New England again: Where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots. And the Cabots talk only to God! ). One of these “regular” Americans - he claims to be a descendent of Elder Hamilton on the Mayflower - with whom I interact, constantly touches upon his “Scottish” heritage. I have observed this same thing in others as well, this harping about their German heritage, Polish heritage, Jewish heritage etc even though they may be quite removed from that mythical ethnic/ regional/ religious/ geographic ancestor. So is this thing called American an imaginary beast like the Loch Ness Monster?

Perhaps so. Yet on the same hand, I believe there is something called becoming American; and in this becoming Walt Whitman singing his exuberant songs can be our Virgil:

“Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet; Those who love each other shall become invincible.”

*Ref: Samuel P. Huntington's "Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity" **Ref: Allan Bloom’s “Closing of The American Mind”